Sarcasm Killed The Cat
Sarcasm killed the cat. The cat is our interaction on the Internet. Sarcasm in itself is already a very strange thing. You say the exact opposite of what you mean. Obviously in person your mannerisms and the tone in which you speak it can usually identify to the person receiving the message that it is in fact sarcasm. Usually anyway.
Now let’s remove the tone in which you say it, the mannerisms that accompany the word, and any other situational queues that could otherwise indicate sarcasm, and what are you left with, just words. Which is very easy to transition to online interaction.
This writing platform is a great example as to how sarcasm could very easily be misconstrued, unless I put it in italics or quotes around it, is there any real way to tell that what I’m saying is sincere, or isn’t sincere? This is becoming very problematic in the online world.
I was tweeting with one of my favorite writers the other day, and I said something very sincere about him being a great writer. The response he gave was something along the lines of “thank you, that’s one of the nicest things anyone has said” I’m paraphrasing but bear with me.
My brain, probably because it’s been bombarded with memes, vines, and countless other things that aren’t serious immediately associated it with that same group of nonsensical imagery and information. When interacting with people in a professional manner this can be very problematic.
It gets even worse when communicating from my generation (I’m 20 years old) to the one above that are online. say 45-60. Since it’s already very hard to realize when something is genuine or sarcastic online, throwing in a generation gap just makes it that much worse.
I tweet with my uncle on a semi-consistent basis, and granted he’s one of the more sarcastic people I know, but almost every tweet that is exchanged has to be followed up with “was that serious, or a joke”. I’m not really sure what the step would be to change it. Installing some sort of sarcasm font seems a little far-fetched, and isn’t very realistic.
The whole situation just makes it very disheartening to know that memes have discombobulated my brain to the extent where I think everything I see is a joke. It’s very possible our generation will never regain sincere online interaction.
If you go to Facebook and you’re friends with a decent amount of people over 35-40 years of age your feed is dry as a bone, but what you see is what you get. There’s little to no sarcasm, which also makes it incredibly boring. Reading about how the bus has been coming 5 minutes late to your kids stop everyday just doesn’t resonate with me the way that reading a sarcastic tweet about Kanye West loving himself does.
That’s just part of it, though, a lack of sarcasm just isn’t entertaining. It just comes down to attempting to dial back on the sarcasm just to make 15% of your twitter interactions run smoother isn’t worth it. I’m a victim of it too, I love that stuff. I’m just afraid of the day when the sarcasm is misinterpreted and it costs me a job opportunity or something of that nature.
Yes, I know a job opportunity from twitter, or Facebook or any social media platform seems like it’s not a possibility, but it is. It could get your foot in the door, or get you talking with someone that will benefit you at some point down the road.
All it takes is one tweet asking a question, and you respond with a seemingly harmless sarcastic tweet saying “oh definitely” or whatever the response may be and it just gets taken completely the wrong way. In the mean time, keep on clogging the arteries of social media interaction with sarcasm we all love.
